polar ice caps
Earth's frozen crowns
Polar ice caps are the massive sheets of ice covering Earth's Arctic and Antarctic regions.
The term appears frequently in discussions of climate change, where melting ice caps signal rising global temperatures: Scientists warn that polar ice caps are shrinking at an alarming rate.
The phrase sometimes extends to ice formations on other planets: Mars has polar ice caps composed partly of frozen carbon dioxide.
- glaciersSlow-moving ice masses
- AntarcticSouthern polar region
- South PoleSouthernmost point on Earth
- North PoleEarth's northern axis point
- sea iceFrozen ocean surface
permafrost · frozen tundra · firn · Arctic Ocean · tundra · glaciology · krill · calving · ice shelf · ice core analysis · ice sheet · penguin · feedback loop · cryosphere · global warming · climate crisis · climatology · paleoclimate
- Climate Changeglobal warming, greenhouse gases, climate change, carbon dioxide, CO2
- earth scienceatmosphere, earthquake, geology, volcano, crust
- glaciersglacier, crevasse, glacial movement, moraine, iceberg
- Air Mass Sourcesarctic, Antarctic, tropical oceans, ocean basins, desert regions
- Mars waterice, ice caps, water vapor, brines, water cycle
- terraformingterraforming, climate control, greenhouse gases, Mars colonization, Mars colony
polar ice capsequator
Midpoint circle of rotation
equatorial regions · tropics · tropical zone · Amazon basin · tropical rainforest
polar ice capsdeserts
Abandons or barren lands
Sahara Desert · Death Valley · volcanic regions · hot springs · Arabian Desert